Thus, the main difference between an alterfactual explanation and a counterfactual or semifactual explanation becomes clear: While the latter methods alter features resulting in a decreased distance to the decision boundary, the former method tries to keep that distance fixed. Further, while counterfactual explanations as well as semifactual explanations try to keep the overall change to the original input minimal [1]}, [2]}, alterfactual explanations do exactly the opposite, which is depicted in Figure REF A.
Figure REF B illustrates the difference between counterfactual and alterfactual explanations using a simple example.
